Cable Help

http://www.taligentx.com/projects/opticalconverter/ want to build one?
http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat_id=504&sku=40018 would be if you wanted to buy one.

In theory It should be the same sounding as just the coaxial because it is the same digital information running through the wires.

 

they should be all the same in quality. It's the same data just over different wires. A 200 dollar one should do they same as that one.

 

I bought a cheap converter that is probably identical hardware with a different brand decal to the one linked above. I got it to convert the coax digital output on a DAT deck to optical for the input on my G5 tower. Worked perfectly as far as I could tell. The only reason I can see a converter like that might be an issue is if it took some perceptible amount of time to do the conversion, in which case the sound would lag the picture. With the way I used mine I can't say if this is the case.

It's funny, I've heard claims that one or the other "sounds" better, which makes absolutely no sense at all to me--if it's a digital signal, it shouldn't matter in the slightest how it gets from A to B. Is there some reason this might acutally be true, or is it in the same category as audiophiles who are convinced that their $1000 AC power cord makes the music sound better than a $500 one (or a $2 thrift-store special, for that matter)?

On a wildly unrelated note, I do prefer optical to coax, but that's mainly because for some reason my audio system makes a loud "pop" when it first picks up a digital coax signal, while the pop is a quiet "tick" with optical.